Cable’s cord is cut; we’re adrift on the streaming sea

On Sunday night, many of you watched the two-hour season premiere of “Mad Men” on AMC. Although I’m a big fan of the show, I did not. Or rather, I could not. That’s because, on Friday, I called AT&T and canceled my U-verse service.

AsI wrote last week, my wife and I decided it’s time to quit paying big cable bills. We’ll use low-cost Internet streaming services and buy seasons of shows we really care about. Sunday’s “Mad Men” premiere was the first real test of our cable-free approach to watching TV.

I spent last week playing around with various services. I signed up for the free, 1-week trial of Hulu Plus and explored the selection available via Netflix, Amazon Instant Video and the iTunes Store. While we’ll certainly save money, there will be some downsides – not the least of which is having the shows we’re watching scattered across multiple sources. But none is enough to counter the approximately $1,600 we’re going to save annually.

The call Friday to cancel U-verse went as expected. Cable companies hate to lose customers, and while the sales rep I talked to was cordial and understanding, he tried hard to convince me to remain with U-verse. He pointed out that I’d not be able to watch lots of sports, and that I’d lose the convenience of U-verse’s DVR. I told him we were intent on cutting the cord because of costs, and he offered something called U Basic, a $34-a-month package that’s mostly local channels and access to on-demand services. There’s no DVR, though – that’s another $15 a month. I politely declined (though after doing so, the rep offered it two more times).

When it became clear I wasn’t going to be dissuaded, he looked at my account and saw we’d just paid our bill. We’ll be getting a refund as a result. I was instructed to take the DVR and the gateway box to UPS, along with an order number and my account number, to return the hardware. (Unfortunately, I can’t just take the devices to an AT&T store – that would be a lot more convenient.)

By late Friday night, U-verse was no longer working. After I got back from the Geek Gathering, we watched an episode of “Luther” – a British series about a tightly wound detective starring Idris Elba – streamed via Netflix.

On Sunday I was able to purchase a TV pass for “Mad Men” on Amazon.com. If you buy an individual episode in HD format, it’s $2.99 (standard-definition is $1.99). But you get a slight price break if you buy the full season: $2.84 per episode. That’s a 5 percent discount – piddling, but hey, I’ll take it! I signed up, and I’ll get new episodes in my video library the day after they’re first shown on AMC. The two Season 6 premiere episodes showed up early Monday morning in my Amazon Video Library.

There are some shows that I’ll want to watch but my wife won’t, and we can save money because we won’t be watching them on our HDTV. For example, I’m a big fan of “Sons of Anarchy,” but she doesn’t care for it. I’ll buy those in standard-definition video, since I’ll be watching them on my iPhone or iPad. I don’t need HD on those devices.

One of the types of content we won’t be able to access easily is live cable news. For example, CNN and Fox require that you have an active cable TV account before you can watch their live feeds, though shows that have already aired are available via their websites and apps. But there are lots of other sources for live news on the Net – not necessarily in video format – and if there’s some really big event going on, the broadcast networks will likely be covering it.

We’ll also miss out on the social aspect of watching popular TV shows as they’re aired for the first time and following along on Twitter. I had to stay off that network Sunday night as “Mad Men” aired because of the constant flow of spoilers.

When we finally watched the first part of the two-hour “Mad Men” premiere on Monday night via Amazon Instant Video, the picture was excellent, maybe even better than what we’d had with U-verse. And there were no commercials at all, of course. Glancing at Twitter, I spotted quite a few people who were apparently doing the same thing, either via DVR or streaming the show, and talking about the show.